It could be said that the 1960s were cinematically owned by Stanley Kubrick. An eleventh entry on this list would probably have to go to Dr. Strangelove, an amazing satirical take on the nuclear scare of the Cold War era. It’s worth mentioning not only for its status as one of the most important films of the decade, but also to emphasize how much of a departure 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only for cinema as a whole but for Stanley Kubrick himself at this point in his directorial career.
Kubrick’s work will always be polarizing, and that’s one of the best things about it. It earns the designations of “challenging,” “poetic,” “artistic,” and “transcendent” with all the annoying connotations that accompany such descriptors. Surely 2001 is his defining work. It embodies everything about the Kubrick oeuvre (even the way a person has to describe his work is slightly annoying!).
Its contribution to the science fiction genre is immense, and its incredibly bold vision as for what a film can do artistically was as shocking and revolutionary as such things can get in cinema. But it also doesn’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people, myself included at this point in my moviegoing life, having only watched it once. For a movie to confidently announce itself on the grandest stage possible as 2001 did back in 1968 and not be afraid of not making sense, trusting its audience to make sense of it for themselves, is not only impressive but critical in the history of film as an art form.
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